Garlic Parmesan Skillet Beer Potatoes

“If you do it right, you’ll life several lifetimes before you’re done.” She was 80-years-old, only frail on the outside, and telling me about the life she lived decades ago. One where she was a young activist living in 1960’s San Francisco. That life, she said, was one that still makes her feel vibrant and rebellious even in her compression socks and sensible shoes.

She shows me pictures, her wildly unkempt hair flowing out of the frame. She says that if I do it right, I’ll look back on this moment with the photo in her hand and her words filling her small kitchen and think to myself, “That was a different life.”

That was about 7 years ago, and she was right. She’d served me scalloped potatoes that she’s baked in a skillet and showed me all the age-worn photos that she could find of that past life she once lived. The one that fills her head as she falls asleep.

“You don’t always have to be a good girl, you can rattle the cage sometimes, dear. Sometimes those are the best choices to make.”

She was also right about that. Skillet potatoes remind me of her, and the advice she’d given. Maybe someday when I’m 80 I’ll make some wide-eyed-farm-girl some potatoes and tell her to rattle cages.